Quotes from Anne Lamott

While it is hard to fathom who we are and how we are to live when public chaos shatters our routine, the slow-motion pain of each private death and cataclysm we endure is harder. Each slams us off our feet, yet we have agreed to pretend to be fine again at some point, ideally as soon as possible, so as not to seem self-indulgent or embarrass anybody.

If anyone is so good that he or she should be spared, you can safely assume that person is in the line of fire. Fair is where the pony rides are.

Augustine said that to look for God is to find him

Writing: shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart–your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born

These days are among the hardest we will ever live through. The wind is blowing, but because we are together in this, we have hope. Most days. Maybe more than ever before in my lifetime, my friends and I are aware of our brokenness and the deep crazy, the desperation for light, hope, food, and medicine for poor. What helps is that we are not all crazy and hopeless on the same day. one of us remembers and reminds the rest of us that when it is really dark you can see the stars.

The old adage is that intimacy means "Into me I see"—deeply, with a flashlight—and believe me, we're not trying to avoid seeing the lovely and selfless aspects of ourselves. It's not even the unlikable qualities—narcissism, fraudulence, envy. It's the really disgusting, uncooked-egg parts of us—wanting people to fail, using people, holding on to resentments, our sense of entitlement.

All it takes is one safe person to listen, to hear, to noodge us to start over and not give up.

One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, 'It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do-- you can either type or kill yourself.

The plates of the earth had shifted and settled inside her, and the world should know.

As is' is the portal to creation, to new life.

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and in the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

Soon I got lost in a good way, with a book, which is also to get found, and my staunchest lifelong light.

You don't get to sit next to your readers and explain little things you left out, or fill in details that would have made the action more interesting or believable. The material has got to work on its own, and the dream must be vivid and continuous.

I remind myself of this when I cannot get any work done: to live as if I am dying, because the truth is we are all terminal on this bus. To live as if we are dying give us a chance to experience some real presence. Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children.

Someone said the softest things in the world overcome the hardest.

Someone else is doing the living for me, and all I have to do is let their stories, humor, knowledge, and images—some of which I'll never forget—flow through me, even as I forget to turn off the car when I arrive at my destination.

Hello, Dearest. I'm so glad it's you!" I've come to believe that this is how God feels when I pray, even at my least attractive.

Periods in the wilderness or desert were not lost time. You might find life, wildflowers, fossils, sources of water.

Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heart, and can try to capture that--the details, the nuance, what is.

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath.

When you love something like reading - or drawing or music or nature - it surrounds you with a sense of connection to something great. If you are lucky enough to know this, then your search for meaning involves whatever that Something is. It's an alchemical blend of affinity and focus that takes us to a place within that feels as close as we ever get to home. It's like pulling into our own train station after a long trip - joy, relief, a pleasant exhaustion.

Booker T. Washington said, "I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him

It's wonderful to travel again when the rest of the world does not feel that war criminals are in charge of your country.

Someone who'd spent $30,000 at a diet hospital told me the secret: Eat less, exercise more. Oh, and here's $5,000 worth of cutting edge advice: drink more water.